An Odd Sort of Morning After
by Igorina
Summary: After Crowley awakens in a most compromising postion he is forced to ask himself those three immortal question: Where am I? How did I get here? And who the hell is that lying next to me?


Disclaimer: I own neither Crowley, Aziraphale or the ahem setting in

which this little ficlet takes place.

A/N: This is what happens when I drink and fic. Any and all feedback  
is welcome whether favourable or not.

As Crowley woke up there were two things that instantly struck him:  
the first was that he wasn't sure when, or for that matter how, he  
had managed to get to bed; the second, and infinitely more  
significant, was that there appeared to be a warm body wrapped  
around him. Whether the presence of the aforementioned warm body was  
a good thing or a bad thing depended entirely on to whom it belonged.

Crowley opened his eyes, and promptly shut them again. It was too  
bloody bright, and the nausea-inducing headache was setting in  
already. Cursing his obvious failure to wish the alcohol out of his  
body before falling asleep - whenever that had been - he began  
trying to mentally reconstruct the previous night's events.

Okay, what was the first thing he could remember? Ah, that was it,  
eating at the Ritz with the angel. He'd been somewhat inebriated by  
the time they'd left, but he could clearly remember that  
ineffability had been mentioned several times. Right, what next?  
There had been a bar; he was pretty sure about that. One of those  
new ones; with the ultra-sleek furnishings and quirky lighting.  
Aziraphale had hated it. Now, what happened then? Oh yes, the joke  
about Michael and Uriel walking into a harem. Aziraphale had pointed  
out that angels' were technically sexless, whilst valiantly trying  
not to snigger. Then he'd said something to the angel about not  
knocking it until he'd tried it, and then.... Oh bloody hel...  
heav... Manchester. Fragmented pieces of recollection began to  
amalgamate themselves back into one continuous, if in parts hazy,  
memory.

His alcohol induced teasing about angelic anatomical incorrectness  
had, after the consumption of a few rather explicitly named  
cocktails, turned into the vocalising of a few, extremely lewd,  
comments - causing Aziraphale's cheeks to acquire a rather striking  
shade of red; which had in turn morphed into Crowley making a  
drunken attempt to seduce the angel.

It had happened quite a few times in their millennia long  
association, and usually ended, depending on how forgiving the angel  
felt like being, with either Aziraphale forcibly extracting the  
alcohol from Crowley's digestive tract, whilst casting a few wry  
aspersions on demonic self control, or Aziraphale storming off and  
refusing to speak to Crowley, in anything but the iciest, of tones  
for months on end. Never before however, had Aziraphale opted to  
grab Crowley and voraciously kiss him; before dragging the demon out  
of the bar and into... Well Crowley couldn't quite recall where  
exactly he had been dragged into; that bit was rather blurred. What  
he did remember though were the incredibly clumsy, yet unutterably  
delicious, things that he and the angel had proceeded to do to each  
other. Over six thousand years worth of angelic sexual repression  
had resolved itself in less than half an hour, and the results had  
been intense, frantic and wickedly divine.

Whilst the memory of being pinned to the bed by a very male angel  
was one that Crowley knew he would undoubtedly treasure for the rest  
of his existence, there was the uncomfortable fact that both of them  
would have to face the whole embarrassing morning after bit. It was  
one of the problems inherent in waking up in a compromising position  
with someone who was, on paper at least, supposed to be one's deadly  
opponent. The most sensible thing, Crowley thought, as he tried to  
ignore his body's demand that he move it into a more comfortable  
position, would be to pretend to be asleep until Aziraphale woke up  
and decided to surreptitiously leave; thus giving them both the  
opportunity to pretend it never happened. There were however, he  
admitted, two fundamental flaws with this plan of action. The first  
was that he was having serious doubts that this was actually his  
bed; the duvet cover appeared to be constructed of a cheap  
polycotton mix, and was not something that he would have ever  
considered materialising for himself. The hypothesis that he wasn't  
in his flat could have been confirmed or refuted if had he felt able  
to either: open his eyes again and look, thereby risking a terrible  
headache, or open his mind and look, thereby risking an even worse  
headache. The second problem was, of course, that Aziraphale would  
probably consider it a breach of morality - not to mention good  
manners - to slip quietly away after sleeping with somebody. This,  
of course, begged the question of why Crowley, being a demon and  
therefore supposedly immune to such ethical hang-ups, wasn't  
considering doing the slipping away. The fact was that whilst doing  
a runner after shagging some attractive yet gullible stranger, whom  
one had just met in a nightclub, was par for the course, it didn't  
seem right to do the same thing to someone, who, when it came down  
to it was - even if he didn't usually admit it to himself - his best  
friend.

Going back to sleep, now there was an idea, decided Crowley, after  
realising that no obvious solution to his current predicament was  
forthcoming. Unfortunately, whilst the sensation of the angel's  
breath on the side of his neck was rather soothing, the voices  
coming from the room next door were, most emphatically, not. A man  
and a woman were arguing very loudly about what colour of bathroom  
mat they should buy. Crowley briefly considered inflicting some  
diabolic horror or other on them, but decided that doing so would  
probably cause Aziraphale to smite him. Not that a bit of mild  
smiting every now and again would necessarily be a bad thing;  
especially if entailed another round of lets see who can pin the  
other to the bed first'.

Beside him Aziraphale stirred, his breathing suddenly becoming  
irregular. In the adjacent room the argument had reached fever  
pitch; with hysterical threats of divorce, should the desired colour  
of mat not be acquired, being made by both parties. Crowley was not  
in the least interested in whether the couple decided to opt for  
terracotta or burnt orange. Certain parts of Crowley however, were  
getting very interested by the fact that Aziraphale's hand had just  
moved from the demon's hip to his lower abdomen. Great, just great.  
There were certain things that Crowley's human body did on autopilot  
that were near impossible to switch off without continuous struggle,  
and this was one of them. Dealing with it in the usual fashion  
wasn't really an option, as the almost awake Aziraphale would  
undoubtedly notice. The option of making the body female was always  
a possibility, but he generally didn't do gender switching in bed  
unless he really didn't like the person lying next to him. Shit,  
what was it that humans did in this sort of situation? Ah, that was  
it; think of something unsexy until one's level of arousal started  
to drop. Right, what was unsexy? Dagon drunkenly explaining his  
strategy for re-evaluating form F89747855743a at that office party  
nine-hundred years ago; that hadn't been the least bit sexy. Or  
Hastur and Ligur performing classical ballet. No... no, some things  
were just too unpleasant to contemplate.

"Crowley," said a sudden, and surprisingly alert, voice next to  
him. "Crowley I know you're awake and have been for the last hour."

"Aziraphale. I erm, I thought you were asleep," said Crowley, eyes  
still resolutely shut. "Didn't want to wake you up."

"I was waiting for you to... Honestly you could at least do me the  
courtesy of actually looking at me."

Crowley groaned in protest, but opened his eyes anyway. After the  
initial assault of the light level on his senses, he was relieved to  
find that the anticipated headache wasn't quite as bad as he'd  
expected.

"Look," said Aziraphale, whom Crowley could now see was utterly  
dishevelled, and all the more attractive for it. "This doesn't have  
to be awkward. We could both just get dressed and pretend that all  
of this never happened."

"Mmph." Crowley murmured, not quite sure whether to be relieved or  
disappointed.

"After knowing each other for over six thousand years, it would be  
utterly silly let a thing like this ruin our... our Arrangement."

"Yeah, s'pose," the demon said, rolling onto his stomach, and  
glancing half-heartedly to the side of the bed in a search for any  
salvageable clothing that might happen be on the floor. He felt too  
drained to materialise anything just yet. "Aziraphale your taste in  
furniture is awful."

"Oh?"

"I mean look at all of this cheap pine and flat pack stuff. Didn't  
think that business was that bad in the second hand book market."

"My dear, none of this belongs to me. The room doesn't belong to me."

"What. Where the fuck are we then?" demanded Crowley, his sense of  
unease suddenly increasing. "This certainly isn't my flat. Unless,  
of course, this is your idea of a joke. I mean, there aren't even  
any fucking windows."

"Crowley, this isn't your flat either," said Aziraphale, who despite  
recent proposals had not yet entirely removed himself from  
Crowley. "I'm surprised you don't remember."

"Remember what?"

"Where we are."

"Which is?"

"Look for yourself," said Aziraphale, gesturing to the door.

Despite the protestation of his limbs Crowley got out of the bed  
and, with great pain, materialised a new, yet strangely  
uncomfortable, designer suit. He walked to the door, opened it, and,  
almost instantly, slammed it shut. He then walked over to the bed,  
where the angel was still reclining, and sat down, his head in his  
hands. After several minutes of stunned silence he spoke.

"Aziraphale."

"Yes Crowley?"

"Aziraphale, we're in a show room, in an Ikea mega store."

"It was your idea."

"My idea?"

"Dear boy, I'm not the one with exhibitionist tendencies."

"Exhibitionist tendencies. How did you get that idea?"

"Your first suggestion was one of the Harrods's display windows."

"I don't remember any of this," protested Crowley. It was useless  
though. The little black spots of alcohol-induced non-memory had  
already begun to fill themselves in.

"You did have rather a lot to drink."

"So did you. And I notice that you didn't try to stop..." And  
Crowley's sentence finished right there owing to the fact that he  
unexpectedly found himself being enthusiastically kissed by an angel  
who was clearly not as innocent as he liked to let on.


End file.
